


give these ghosts a new home

by yude_londa



Series: it will come right back to you [4]
Category: ATEEZ (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Bodyguard, Angst, Bodyguard Song Mingi, Childhood Friends, Hopeful Ending, M/M, Modern Royalty, Panic Attacks, Pining, Prince Jeong Yunho, Substance Abuse, just a bit, no beta we die like men
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-08
Updated: 2021-02-08
Packaged: 2021-03-12 16:41:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,169
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29263734
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yude_londa/pseuds/yude_londa
Summary: “I know with my injuries, my fuckingtrauma,I wouldn’t have gotten better. There was no way I was going to last long as a Shield. Yunho did the sensible thing, discharging me, considering my health and all that.I know that. I just wish—“Mingi stopped. Tried to breathe through the pain when it flared, digging his fingers into the armrests, and counting to eight. It eased soon enough, the painkillers kicking in.Wooyoung made a questioning sound.“I just wish that he kept me anyway,” he finished in a whisper and didn’t look at Wooyoung.
Relationships: Jeong Yunho/Song Mingi, Minor or Background Relationship(s)
Series: it will come right back to you [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2104728
Comments: 19
Kudos: 79





	give these ghosts a new home

**Author's Note:**

> Posting this one while I can. I got accepted by the uni of my choice and can't write (or draw) as much as I want to.
> 
> Hope you enjoy reading!

It had been a week since Song Mingi’s world fractured beyond comprehension, and he was finding it increasingly difficult to get up in the mornings. 

It was ironic, in a way, that he had enough energy to fight the doctors and get out of bed when he was still in the hospital, yet didn’t have any to spare when he was finally discharged. But then again, he still had his duty then. The driving force of all his actions.

In all his life, Mingi had never expected to outlive that. But he did, against all the odds. 

According to Hongjoong’s doctor friend, Mingi had done the impossible by holding out as long as he had. Anyone else would have succumbed to their injuries in a week, never mind surviving two weeks and two days. Mingi hadn’t given the statement much thought when he first heard it, considering the training he went through. But maybe he should have.

Maybe then he would have known better than to expect things to go back to normal. Maybe then he would have been better prepared for the total upheaval of his life, of his heart.

And see, Mingi was the Song heir. He wasn’t brought up on dreams of happy and monogamous marriages. He had seen his mother walk away at eleven and never questioned why his father didn’t ask her to stay. To him, it was a matter of her leaving, not his father letting her go. 

Duty called, far louder than love.

For a House known for its decorated soldiers and Royal guards, heartbreak was a given. Mingi was not the exception. He was the example.

If things went as they should have, Mingi would have married the youngest daughter of House Wang, an ambitious politician who wanted everything to do with the prestige of the name Song and nothing to do with the man carrying it. It would have been a loveless marriage but a good partnership, with the occasional mistresses of Wang Haneul disrupting it, perhaps. 

Best case scenario, he would have found a friend to turn to when Yunho inevitably married a good woman of the right status and asked Mingi to attend his wedding. Worst case scenario, he would have a distant stranger living in his ancestral home and judging him for his life choices. Either way, it wouldn’t have mattered.

The plan had been to stay by Yunho’s side for as long as he could, after all, protecting him in any way known to man. Mingi would have been fine with that, had trained himself meticulously to be fine with that.

But he had no training, no defense for Yunho himself. He never thought he needed one.

But it was his prince that dug into the core of him and untangled all the threads that were holding him together. It was his prince that cut him clean off and left him with nothing but cold medals and fading memories to cling to. Mingi’s predestined heartbreak, hand-delivered by the one he adored above all else. 

It left him unmoored, like he was a boat lost at sea and Yunho was the lighthouse that stopped shining the way home. 

Now, days stretched out torturously, seeming to go on forever, and things that were once manageable became impossible to fulfill, to ignore. 

The flare of pain in his back didn’t stay there, it spread and locked his limbs. The walls of his childhood room didn’t stay familiar and comforting. Instead, they turned into decaying wood, becoming the prison that cut him off from the rest of the world and trapped him inside, killing him in slow increments.

Panic attacks, Mingi found, were a bitch to deal with.

He wondered if his mind would be his enemy for the rest of his life. If he had to fight to breathe anytime he got stuck in a dark closed-off space. The very thought of it stole what little energy he had left, overwhelming in the worst way. 

He turned away all calls from his teammates—former teammates that should have nothing to do with Mingi now. They had their duty, their prince to look after. Mingi trusted them to do what he couldn’t anymore and there was something bitter and helpless in that admission. He’d promised Hongjoong to reach out when he was ready but he wasn’t sure if he’d ever be.

At the rate Mingi was going, he was going to buy a cottage in Siberia to run from his former team and their well-meaning but intrusive questions. If he hid anywhere near their kingdom, they’d track him down like the elite they were and drag him forcibly to a therapist, and Mingi wanted to have his breakdowns in peace. Out of sight from his prince.

Of course, his father had a few things to say about his only heir effectively cutting himself from the general population. 

When the Song family Head came to visit him, Mingi hadn’t been prepared. 

The man had visited him maybe twice in the entirety of his stay at the hospital. Once, to confirm that his son was really alive. Second, to see if he’d be able to carry the name Song still. Mingi wasn’t sure if being dismissed from the Royal order disqualified him. None of the Songs before him had ever been off the board completely. Some were discharged in terms of their health, like him, but never so irreversibly. Most of them stuck around, as advisors, as spies. 

The fact that Mingi had been dismissed not only as a Royal guard, but also from the Royal order entirely spoke volumes about the faith his prince had in him now. Which was to say: none.

It stung, worse than any stab wound, and Mingi wasn’t sure he’d be able to keep himself together if his father decided to rub salt on his wounds. The way the man looked at him wasn’t as severe and judging as Mingi had braced himself for. But it was still cold, still distant. Assessing.

This was the man that served his Queen just as faithfully as Mingi had served his prince. Only, where Mingi was a Shield, his father was a Sword. An enforcer that helped his liege usurp her tyrant uncle and take the throne for herself, silencing all that opposed her. Rumors said that his father had executed dozens in the name of the crown, but Mingi knew them to be false. 

It had been hundreds.

Suffice to say, Song Kangdae was not known for being a merciful man, not even for his son. If anything, he was much stricter with him. It worked just fine when Mingi had needed that iron hand to mold him into the perfect soldier. But that wasn’t the case anymore.

So Mingi had been carefully avoiding thinking about the punishment he’d get for failing the crown and wasting their efforts. The mere thought of it had sickened him, driving him into a near panic attack. Mingi from months ago would have endured the retraining stoically, clinging to the mantra that his prince would be there to see him once it was over. He had no such security blanket now.

And now that his father was here, with whatever lesson he deemed necessary for his failure of a son, Mingi felt the dreadfully familiar feeling of something choking him trickle into his awareness. And see, this is why Yunho had let him go. If he couldn’t face his father without falling apart, how could he stand proud as a Shield? He couldn’t. He’d fail at everything. He’d get his team killed, he’d get his prince killed—hell, he almost did, and he almost died and he shouldn’t be breathing—couldn’t be breathing—

Hands, burned, scarred, yet still steady, dug into his shoulders.

The touch was painful enough to ground him, and Mingi was suddenly distantly aware of his father commanding him to breathe, in and out, _in and out_. Like any good soldier, Mingi followed the command, leaning into his father’s hands, for once almost gentle in their intention. Overwhelmed, he curled into himself, and the Song senior, miraculously enough, let him, sitting down next to his son on the entrance floor, his gruff voice echoing down the hall.

_Breathe, Mingi._

Mingi did, though pain and panic that shouldn’t be so consuming but were anyway.

Once he grappled his shaking body under control, his father stood up, dusting off his pants. Mingi didn’t look up, staring straight at his folded feet. Humiliation burned his face. He’d been shot, stabbed, and burned, multiple times, on purpose, accidentally, and yet—

“Look up,” said the Song father, always disapproving of his son lowering his head around anyone but the Royals.

Mingi did as his father commanded. 

His father looked just like him, Mingi knew. Everyone had something to say about it. With the exception of his sharp nose and the moles that he got from his mother, Mingi was eerily similar to Song Kangdae from twenty years ago. The Queen had once told him, almost fond, that there were many things that they shared in terms of looks and presence.

And now that list of similarities included haunted eyes, Mingi realized.

Against the protest of his back, Mingi stood up and faced his father, properly. Song Kangdae’s eyes softened in something like approval, like understanding. He’d been held hostage once, Mingi remembered with sudden clarity, used as leverage against the newly crowned Queen. Jeong Aeri had abandoned him then, expecting her Sword to crawl out of the war prison himself or die trying. 

His father did, marching into the palace with the whereabouts of the rebels and a limp in his leg that never went away. For that, he never lost his official position as a Sword. But the Queen never wielded him again, delegating the task of the enforcer to the younger Songs and putting the splintered steel shards of Song Kangdae in a neat box called the Royal Secretariat.

If there was anyone who could understand the magnitude of Mingi’s loss, it was his father. Their similarities didn’t end with their appearances. It went deeper than that. Whatever grief Song Kangdae had put Mingi through, it had never been something that Mingi couldn’t handle, in the end. 

Clinging to that bit of comfort from the man that never actually comforted him, Mingi waited for his next order. He didn’t have to wait long.

“You’ve done your duty. You’ve been discharged with honors,” were the words that came from the Song patriarch.

“Go to your mother,” were the ones from his father.

His mother. 

The one person in Mingi’s life that had wanted to give him a life outside of duty. 

In the first year of their separation, she fought like hell to get custody of her oldest. On the occasions she was allowed to visit, she had tried to coax Mingi with promises of endless sweets and video games. Promises that could have worked, in another life, on another child. But Mingi had met Yunho by then. He’d seen the shape of his duty, his future, in the lonely boy who had no friends, no playmates, just like him, and decided that he loved it already. 

His mother, realizing the futility of taking someone so close to the prince, had stopped the custody battles. She never stopped demanding visits from him though, either forcing Mingi to come or going to him herself.

She’d take care of him, Mingi thought, feeling a little faint. She’d know what to do with her wayward son.

“I’ll talk with your mother and prepare the flight for you. Pack for a long trip,” his father said, steamrolling over Mingi as always. 

Mingi didn’t mind it, not this time. 

He just nodded and let himself be swept in the prospect of moving, packing all his essentials, and carrying them to the car provided by his father. The process of moving through the airport was familiar in some ways and entirely alien in others. He wasn’t allowed any weapons, for one thing, he was responsible for his own luggage, for another. 

Most glaringly, Mingi had no one but himself to look after.

In the years that he’d served as a Shield, Mingi had followed Yunho to all corners of the world, tailing him at summer summits in Cairo and Royal weddings in Manila. Trips abroad were always a nightmare for the security department, considering all the unknown people they had to take into account. Still, Mingi had always made sure to carve himself just enough time to admire his prince in his element.

Winding down from stressful patrols, Mingi thought that he had collected more memories and snapshots of Yunho than anyone else in the world. He had seen his prince suffused in the golden sun of deserts and swept up in the whistling winds of highlands. Whatever the place, the weather, the event, Yunho had looked beautiful. Even more so when he was laughing, ecstatic with the curiosity and the shyness of the foreign children, each scrambling to take a glimpse of the most breathtaking Royal in the world.

This one trip, and all the trips after, would never have that beauty, that laugh. 

The thought almost made Mingi reconsider getting on the plane headed to Mongolia. His mother’s current home wasn’t that far from their kingdom, only three hours of flight at most. If anything happened, he could return home immediately. But this wasn’t about the distance. This was about Mingi willingly leaving behind his prince, denying himself everything that came with being close to Yunho.

He felt, perhaps naively, like he was betraying his prince. Or more accurately, his past self, the one that had seen his prince dance by himself through the empty palace halls and promised to never leave him alone.

Just when Mingi thought of turning around and going back, his phone vibrated in his pocket, snapping him out of his reverie. Mingi checked his phone to see who was calling.

Hongjoong.

Oh. That reminded him.

Mingi wasn’t leaving his prince alone, was he? With men like Kim Hongjoong and Choi Jongho by his side, Yunho didn’t need him anymore. That was the entire point of Mingi’s dismissal. No one used a broken Shield for protection. They either reformed it or replaced it with a better one.

Mingi closed his eyes, counted to eight, and then picked up the phone. Hongjoong’s voice filtered in, fast and beyond pissed.

“Fucking finally deigning to pick up, are you? You asshole, do you know how worried—” 

“I’m leaving,” Mingi cut him off before he could start a whole lecture.

“Excuse me?” The concern and the confusion in his leader’s voice were clear, even through the irritation. 

Mingi smiled wryly at that. Another thing that he’d miss when he’d leave.

“I’m going to visit my mother. It’s a direct order from my father,” he explained.

There was a moment of silence, when Hongjoong tried to figure out if Mingi was joking or not. The dynamics of the Song family were fucked enough that he actually had to consider it.

“How long?” his leader asked in the end.

“I don’t know,” Mingi answered, as truthfully as he could. 

Unless his former team needed him for something that only he could do, which was highly unlikely, seeing as he trained with them, he didn’t think he was returning for a year at least. He needed enough time to rebuild himself and his life without using Yunho as the foundation of everything. His father had allowed it, mentioning that Wang Haneul was a patient woman and amiable to a long engagement.

“Okay, Seonghwa says it’s good that you’re spending time with your family,” Hongjoong said after a pause.

Mingi almost chuckled, feeling kind of tickled by his fussy head of security and his equally fussy doctor friend. 

If there was one good thing that came from the hell Mingi went through, it was Park Seonghwa taking one look at Hongjoong’s appalling work schedule and imposing his medical expertise on the man. While Hongjoong took care of his team, Seonghwa took care of Hongjoong. It was a neat system that operated just fine without Mingi, and he was almost glad for it.

“I know, a good support system and all that. My mother—she’s good,” Mingi said. As good as any mother could be to a son that was essentially a Royal figure and a stranger.

“Well, have a safe trip then. When are you leaving?”

Mingi checked the time. “Right now.”

“Wait, right now?” Hongjoong’s voice was incredulous, like he couldn’t believe that Mingi was leaving them, just like that. Mingi didn’t hold it against him. He himself didn’t fully believe it either.

“Yes, right now,” Mingi repeated, reaffirming his decision, to Hongjoong, to himself. He started walking towards the plane.

Yunho, sun-kissed and radiant, never belonged to Mingi anyway. All he could ever do was look, and Mingi could do that from the other side of the world, on his phone, without humiliating himself with teary eyes and shaky hands. He had to remember that.

“Asshole, you should have let one of us see you off,” his leader groused, breaking Mingi out of his hopeless musings.

This time, Mingi laughed outright, imagining someone like Jongho or Yeosang escorting him to the airport and waving him off, like they were just old college friends and not one of the most dangerous men in their country. They had much better things to do with their time.

“Well, too late for that. I have to go now,” Mingi said in the end.

Hongjoong, rarely the one to misread and misjudge a person, seemed to pick up something final in Mingi’s tone.

“Keep in touch,” he said forcefully, like it was an order, like Mingi was still expected to obey it.

Mingi considered saying no. 

For one serious moment, he considered cutting himself off from the palace completely. A clean cut with no strings attached. A Song that didn’t answer to the crown directly. But he couldn’t do that to Hongjoong, to the man that put up with his bullshit for almost a decade. He also couldn’t do that to himself, to the boy that fell for his hyung thirteen years ago and never managed to get up.

If nothing else, he needed to know that Yunho was safe and happy. That was the bare minimum of Mingi’s necessities, and since he couldn’t get it himself anymore, he needed someone else to do it for him.

The former guard promised to call when he landed and hung up. He debated keeping the phone on until the last minute, just in case someone else called, before realizing what he was doing and turning off the phone completely. Yunho didn’t know. Worse still, he didn’t care.

Mingi boarded the plane with a heart that felt simultaneously as heavy as a stone and as light as a feather. A paper bag was taken in case all the contradicting feelings in his gut decided to make him sicker than he already was.

Mongolia, even through a small plane window, was an experience.

He didn’t really get the deal at first, wondering why his mother would pick a country like that for her home of six years now. With her travel agency, she could be living in Greece if she wanted to. There were places much better than barren grasslands and deserts.

But then Mingi realized he hadn’t seen a single city or town in the time he’d spent looking out the window. The few human settlements he saw had miles upon miles between them. There was something to be said about that desolate state of the steppes, something vast and free. 

Most places Mingi had seen in his life had been bursting with people, alive with motion. The capitals, the cultural landmarks, repurposed for a visit from a Royal. It meant dangerous crowds, unfamiliar buildings, and beautiful daughters of foreign ministers that just happened to be Yunho’s tour guides. 

He hated a lot of things about those, some more than others. Now thinking about it, his mother probably hated them too, albeit for different reasons. The Jung heiress had always loved pissing off the traditionalists. 

After the divorce, his mother had opened her ancestral home to the public and started her business from there. She’d been scorned by many for that. People knew better than to say anything derisive to Mingi’s face, but he’d been a guard-in-training with a knack for espionage. Mingi heard things, cruel things, and wasn’t sure if he was supposed to be proud of his mother or ashamed. His father had said nothing, avoiding all talks about his ex-wife.

But then Yunho had nothing but words of praise for his mother, calling Jung Yuri a genius entrepreneur and an inspiration for many. It had the double effect of shutting down the malicious rumors and of making Mingi realize that he was perhaps a bit too gone for his prince. A lot of things that Yunho did had that effect.

Mingi hadn’t seen any problem with it then. His duty and his love were one and the same, balanced carefully between his mind and his heart. How could it be a problem?

Like this, Mingi thought, getting off the plane and trying not to panic in the crowd until he saw his mother wave at him, feeling embarrassingly dependent on her. It could be a problem, like this. His prince took the duty off the board and tipped everything towards his heart and now Mingi felt either too little or too much, all the damn time. 

When his mother dragged him into a gentle hug, mindful of his healing body, Mingi wanted to burst into tears. Jung Yuri was a head shorter than him, had been since Mingi was seventeen, but he felt much smaller in her arms anyway. It was on the side of too much.

“Let’s get you settled, love,” his mother said, wrangling his luggage from him and crowding him towards her car. Mingi went obediently.

“How long will you be staying?” she asked when they were on the road.

“Father didn’t tell you?”

“No, he said it’d be up to you,” she said, sounding surprised despite herself. The Song patriarch rarely let Mingi choose for himself. It was one of the main things that they had fought about, before their divorce. 

“I don’t know. Maybe a year or two,” he said and then realized something. He was too busy running to his mother like a little boy that he didn’t even think to ask—

“Would that be okay with your family?”

“They’re your family too! But yes, Insoo and the twins would be delighted to have you,” his mother insisted.

Mingi doubted that. Seojoon and Seoyeon might grow to like him, being only eight and such. They were happy enough with the gifts Mingi had sent over the years, he’d heard. But his mother’s husband wasn’t as easy to please. Kim Insoo was polite enough during the few times they happened to meet but that didn’t tell him much. The man’s unchanging smile had been mildly unnerving, especially when their topic of conversation changed to Song Kangdae once.

Then the smile had turned intent, and the man had asked Mingi to invite his father for a quick visit. Mingi had to politely excuse himself.

Mingi made a note to get himself a separate place as soon as he was able, just in case things got tense, and popped a pill in his mouth. His mother, who was happily chattering at him about the places they could visit, stopped and frowned at him in the rearview mirror. 

“Are those prescribed?”

“Well, no. But it’s nothing, just a painkiller—“ Mingi started to explain.

“Your father took the same brand, Mingi,” she interrupted. 

There was a moment of tense silence. 

Mingi wondered if he could convince her that wasn’t the same one, not really, but then thought better of it. Jung Yuri had been to one to pick up the pieces of Song Kangdae when the Queen had left him to die. His mother surely knew better. Her flinty stare told him so.

“It’s just—it won’t stop hurting,” Mingi said in the end. He hated how small his voice sounded. 

Jung Yuri softened immediately, eyes going misty, looking like she might just drag Mingi into another hug if she wasn’t driving. Mingi slowly leaned back in his seat in case she tried it.

“We’ll get you a doctor, okay? There are better medications,” his mother said, firm but caring. 

_Ones with fewer chances of addiction and long-term health problems_ , she didn’t say, and Mingi was grateful for it.

“In the meantime, try to sleep, okay? It’s getting late,” his mother said. Mingi doubted that he’d be sleeping anytime soon but he could pretend for her.

“Oh, and call your father and tell him you’re with me now.” Yuri would much rather not talk to the man considering the state of her son. She’d likely end up yelling and crying, again, and Kangdae would be panicking in that restrained way of his on the other side of the phone. No one needed that kind of stress.

Mingi turned on his phone. There were few message notifications from his old team and one from an unknown number. He thumbed through them to see if they needed his attention. None of them did, except perhaps the one from the unknown. It seemed out of place among all the messages wishing him safe travels.

_[Will you come back?]_

Mingi frowned and started typing.

[I’m sorry but who are you?]

He waited to see if there would be an answer. When there wasn’t, he deleted the messages and called his father. Afterward, Mingi made himself as comfortable as he could and closed his eyes. He carefully didn’t think about the fact that he was in a small closed-off place and concentrated on his mother’s presence.

The ride was a long one, the sky turning dark when they pulled up to the gates of his mother’s home. It was a modest estate and Jung Yuri could really do better, but maybe that was the point. She had always been happy with the small things, the simple things. A job that she loved and a family that trickled out to greet her when she came home made her happier than anything the Songs could offer her.

When his mother got out of the car, there were hugs and kisses all around. Affection given freely, without thought. 

Mingi, still pretending to be asleep, looked at the display with a longing that surprised him with its intensity. 

Yunho used to be affectionate. 

The young prince once had a habit of tackling Mingi with squeezing hugs and over-the-top cheek kisses to greet him. No one else had dared to be that careless with the Song heir. Mingi, before he wised up and realized the inappropriateness of them, used to live for those gestures, practically melting in his hyung’s arms and returning the affection whenever he could. Once, Mingi had slumped over Yunho in exhaustion without remembering the mud he got all over himself from training. The resulting mess and the impromptu laundry time had Yunho in stitches.

In the car, Mingi closed his eyes and tried to dispel the memories. It didn’t really work, and when his mother knocked on the car window to wake him up, he was grateful for the distraction.

He got out wearily and immediately tensed up when two small things latched themselves to his waist. He bit back a pained noise.

“Hello!” chirped his siblings with an accent that must be Mongolian.

Instagram photos didn’t do their cuteness justice, Mingi thought through the pain.

“His back! Gentler!” his mother shrieked.

“Oh, right, sorry,” they said and unlatched themselves. Then they hugged him again, this time with featherlight hands. There was almost no pressure behind their touches, and Mingi felt a bit like a tree fenced by two very dedicated bushes. He kind of wanted to cry again.

“Hey, Joon-ah, Yeon-ah,” he said, voice as soft as he could manage it.

He was answered by twin beams. They both had a gap tooth, though in different places. Mingi had to run a hand through their hair, marveling at their giggles. His mother allowed the hug to last for a moment longer before herding the twins towards the house, scolding them for their light clothes and bare feet. It left Mingi alone with his stepfather, who was smiling at him, as always.

Mingi, more awkwardly than he liked, extended a hand towards Kim Insoo. The man gripped it, shaking it once, twice. His smile seemed to turn more genuine.

“Make yourself home,” he said.

The following month, Mingi did exactly that.

In the beginning, he worried that he’d stick out like a sore thumb in the Jung household. But there seemed to be a premeditated plan that everyone agreed to, involving forcibly adopting Song Mingi into the family and scrambling to accommodate him to the best of their abilities. 

He got the one room with windows as big as double doors and just as easy to open. It was far away from others that he wouldn’t keep them up with his nightmares, but not so far away that he wouldn’t be able to hear the people in the house moving. It also had a bedside lamp that turned on and off with a clap and a drawer full of household weapons. The bed itself was military-soft, which was to say, not at all, and it was perfect for Mingi. Honestly, everything was perfect for Mingi.

It made him suspect that his parents had joined forces to give him an extended vacation long before his prince had dismissed him, and that? He didn’t know what to do with that. 

Mingi had spent a decade and a half thinking of his parents as these distant figures that only showed up to redirect his life course when it was about to steer off the beaten path (and perhaps off a cliff and into a certain death). The fact that they broke years of silence between them to take care of him made him uncertain, perhaps even bitter that he had to go through hell for it.

He’d seen the divide between his parents and didn’t think he could make himself home over a faulty bridge. The palace halls he’d shared with his prince and then his team made do as his home, but those turned out to be faulty too. Everything just kept unraveling beneath his feet, and Mingi felt tired of it all.

So he hadn’t known how to act around his mother for a while, and she had made no comment on his evasive nature. His stepfather had no such grace though. 

Mingi has been right to be wary of Kim Insoo. The man had poked and prodded relentlessly, without ever pausing to consider that maybe it wasn’t such a good idea to mess with his stepson that happened to be a trained fighter. Even his mother couldn’t stop him from making the occasional cracks at Mingi’s militaristic regime paired with couch-surfing. Such was the uncaring nature of someone who grew up with no House to honor and no crown to obey. 

Mingi found that he’d needed that more than anything else.

When he was going stir-crazy with nothing to do, Kim Insoo blithely told him to learn Mongolian and babysit his son and daughter if he was going to live with them. Mongolian wasn’t a useful language in terms of international relations. No more than four million people were fluent in it, and it was supposedly hard to master. If he were still in the Royal order, Mingi wouldn’t have given it much effort beyond ‘Hello’ and ‘This is the prince’.

Which just meant he had to give it his all now.

Browsing through the Mongolian side of the internet with the twins, Mingi found that he liked the country’s music scene. When he worked as a guard, he never let himself to truly enjoy any of the performances made for the Royals. The world-renowned performers barely registered beyond potential threats then. But now, Mingi thought that there was nothing quite like Mongolian rappers that incorporated traditional instruments and throat singing into their aggressively energetic songs.

They didn’t help with the language lessons, Mingi readily admitted. They weren’t his teachers and never will be.

The twins were. Though they were not particularly good ones and went wildly off-course most times, Mingi loved listening to them all the same.

Once, his siblings had dragged him as their chaperone to pick strawberries in the mountain forest behind the Jung estate. They had, in all their eight-year-old wisdom, taught him to look for the berries by laying down, since they tended to hide under the leaves. Mingi did most of the picking and pretended not to notice the sticky red hands that kept raiding his basket. By the end of the trip, Mingi found himself thinking that he’d gladly die for Jung Seojoon and Jung Seoyeon.

It was kind of terrifying, the way his little siblings claimed parts of his heart that belonged to the prince first and then dug out parts that Mingi didn’t even know existed. And see, Mingi’s love for Yunho was never simple, weighted with things like _duty_ and _worth_ and _shame_ , but it was always true. He was always loyal to it. Even when it hurt. Especially when it hurt. 

But Seojoon and Seoyeon? The kids that gave Mingi sweets but only after they ate half of it? The kids that hugged Mingi with gentleness they reserved for baby animals and their hurt brother? The kids that tried to follow Mingi on his morning jogs, each day, before giving up and laying on the dirty ground in protest?

Loving them came as easy as breathing.

It surprised Mingi. That he could love someone in ways that didn’t ache, didn’t consume. And that, more than anything, gave Mingi the direction he needed. If nothing else, he’d be a good brother. If nothing else, he’d give his siblings a good life. It would be nothing like his parents’, nothing like his own. There would be no lifelong oath to uphold, no bloodied crown to bow under, and no sun-blessed prince to love and love and _love_ —

Absolutely none of that. 

Mingi would fight anyone who tried to give them that, even if it was Yunho, and wasn’t that a surprise? 

In the end, there would only be happiness, the simple kind, the one found in everyday life. That was the promise Mingi made for his siblings the day they brought him back a whole candy, unopened.

Of course, this was when his mother hired her distant relative, Wooyoung, as a babysitter. It threw off the routine Mingi had set for himself, for others, but he didn’t hold it against her. Jung Yuri and Kim Insoo were needed at their agency, in Shanghai, and Mingi wasn’t the best person to entrust young children to, even without the sudden panic attacks and the tendency to sleep with a knife under his pillow. A well-adjusted babysitter was definitely needed in the house.

Now, living with Wooyoung was an experience, he’d say.

Jung Wooyoung was exactly the kind of brazen that was Kim Insoo, raiding the wine cabinet and telling his children that it was grape juice and that he’d buy them from the store later, about ten years later. The twins, understandably, loved him. Mingi would feel jealous if he didn’t have a distinct impression that Wooyoung was trying to babysit him, too.

A month ago that would have been enough to set Mingi off, the guard in him recoiling at the thought of some stranger trying to take care of him. As it was, he let Wooyoung talk him into most things he wanted to do. If they were within reason. 

He wasn’t going to give a civilian a lesson on the coded language used by Royal guards, no matter how well-meaning and friendly the civilian is. It was coded for a reason. But he would let him open an Instagram account for him and fill it with photos of Mingi with the twins. Even if the number of followers he got within the first week baffled him. Apparently, the elusive Song heir and Shield had been a big hit with the kingdom, and Mingi never knew. He’d been too invested in his prince’s public image to consider his own.

“There are Twitter accounts dedicated to your thighs, man. You should check them out,” Wooyoung had told him, grinning from ear to ear. 

Being a well-respected choreographer with a decent following, Wooyoung was no stranger to idolization and everything that came with it. For him, this was the norm.

For Mingi, this was anything but the norm. He had pretended not to hear Wooyoung and continued scrolling through the comments on his account. He liked the ones that gushed over the cuteness of the twins and ignored the ones that were, as Wooyoung put it, thirsting over him. It had the weird effect of making him even more popular with the thirsty ones. Mingi was now a young ‘DILF’, whatever the hell that was that had Wooyoung laughing hysterically.

He looked up the word and made peace with the fact that he’d never understand his generation.

In the end, he just ignored all the comments. Though there was one account that he couldn’t really ignore. Mostly because it kept picking fights with people in the comments, creating threads of replies that went for ages. Probably a jealous fan, Wooyoung had said, but Mingi wasn’t sure. When they weren’t skewering people for being blatantly disrespectful to Mingi on his own account, the person behind the account offered some truly sweet comments. 

_[_ **_song.yn_ ** _you look happy. I’m glad you’re having fun]_

_[_ **_song.yn_ ** _your sibling must love you very much. look at how excited they are]_

_[_ **_song.yn_ ** _you don’t look so tired anymore. that’s good, you should rest]_

If Mingi didn’t know better, he’d say that the person knew Mingi personally and was actually talking to him. But Mingi did know better because none of his team had a public account of any kind and most of them had already called to rib him about his new-found Instagram model status. Yeosang had been particularly merciless with his teasing, and Hongjoong had said something about finally retiring as a messenger for morons.

Whoever it was that ran the account **song.yn** and posted nothing but comments on all of Mingi’s photos, it couldn’t have been someone Mingi knew. He did find himself thinking that he’d like to though. There was something warm and familiar about the way they ranted at people, and Mingi wondered if it would be weird if he just replied to one of their comments.

He couldn’t dwell on the thought for long though. With the revelation Wooyoung brought to him, Mingi couldn’t really dwell on anything else.

“So this is really fucking weird, and I need you to promise me not to freak out,” Wooyoung began one day. 

The twins were conked out in the guest room after a day of water fights, and the adults were on the front porch sharing a bottle of rosé between them. Mingi finally got on a medication that agreed with alcohol, and the plan had been to get warm and tipsy. He wondered if it was a good idea now. 

“I’m a paranoid ex-guard, you’re already freaking me out,” Mingi said, as honest as he was with alcohol in him.

“Okay, fair! I just have to say that I refused first. I didn’t agree to anything. Please remember that,” Wooyoung continued, worrying Mingi further. 

Mingi frowned at him. 

“Someone offered me outrageous amounts of money to spy on you, and by someone I mean our very loving but really fucking intense and kind of terrifying prince Yunho,” Wooyoung rushed to say, before clamming up.

There was a moment of silence.

Then Mingi plucked the bottle between them and started downing it like water. He ignored the worried noises Wooyoung made at that. The previous plan was a good one, it was the best fucking one. Mingi needed to get shitfaced for this.

Mingi never regretted taking his prince’s place that day. _Never_. 

Even in the unspeakable agony that paralyzed him, even in the horrifying realization that he was going to die alone and forgotten, _even then_ , Mingi had no regrets. He made the same choice, when he was twelve, eighteen, and twenty-four, and he always stood by it. Mingi had never second-guessed himself, his role, his prince. And _yet—_

How could he? How fucking _could he?_

Didn’t his prince trust him? Even just a little bit? What did sixteen years of staunch service mean to Yunho? Nothing? Was that it? Did Mingi spend all those years molding himself for a man who’d— _spy on him?_

“I don’t think he meant that in a bad way?” Wooyoung said hesitantly, jolting Mingi in his seat. 

God, this is why he stopped drinking around Yunho. His tendency to babble while drunk would have screwed him over before any kidnapper could, and Mingi would have been dismissed from his post much, much earlier.

“How else could he have meant it?” Mingi asked, perhaps a little too bitter, a little too harsh.

Mingi had done a good job of repressing the sense of betrayal he felt when Yunho kicked him out of the palace. No one questioned what the prince did. If he dismissed you from the Royal order, you packed your things and went home and didn’t make a single word of complaint. The crown was above criticism, after all. That was the law. 

But after the day Mingi had— _hell, after the months Mingi had_ —he thought he was entitled to a bit of anger.

“I mean, he told me to report on your health and well-being. Nothing else,” Wooyoung said.

And god, what was he supposed to do with that exactly?

That was a direct kick to Mingi’s stupid hopeful heart. Stomped, mangled, it still perked up at the slightest gesture of kindness and concern from his prince. Touched, despite everything. Forgiving, despite everything.

It never learned anything.

He wanted to dig into his chest and stop his heart from melting. Mingi had spent years curbing every soft and useless thing about himself except the one that mattered the most. It was maddening just how _weak_ Mingi was for Yunho.

“He couldn’t ask someone else to do it? My parents? Hongjoong? Why you?” Mingi asked, voice suspiciously hoarse. He took a swing from the bottle to ease the sudden lump in his throat.

Wooyoung shrugged. “I think I was the last resort. He offered a lot in payment.”

Mingi considered that. Finished the rest of the wine in silence.

A messenger for morons, Hongjoong had said. 

Mingi wanted to laugh at that, a little hysterical. While he was calling Hongjoong to know if his prince was okay, was his leader answering the same questions about Mingi from Yunho? He must have been. And in a true Kim Hongjoong fashion, he must have stopped investing time in the bullshit that was Mingi and Yunho.

Mingi couldn’t imagine disobeying a direct order from the prince, if he wanted something bad enough that he’d resort to bribery for it. But Hongjoong could always walk the fine line of malicious compliance and straight-up insubordination without tripping. If he really wanted to, he could have ignored their prince if Yunho got too much.

“If he’s so damn worried, why did he kick me out?” Mingi wondered out loud. The question wasn’t meant for anyone.

Wooyoung answered anyway.

“Think your health had something to do with it?” he said.

“Don’t you think I know that?” Mingi snapped. He sat up straighter in his seat and gripped the wine bottle tighter.

Wooyoung leaned away from Mingi and pointed behind himself, as if to say, _‘bro, chill, the children are sleeping.’_

Mingi bit back a groan. 

The sudden movement didn’t endear itself to his lower back, and now it felt like someone put a lump of hot coal under his skin. It had the double effect of making everything unbearable and reminding him of his state. His weak useless state.

Why did the prince kick him out, indeed.

Mingi put down the empty bottle with shaky hands and smiled grimly. When Wooyoung made a worried face at that, he started talking.

“I know with my injuries, my fucking _trauma,_ I wouldn’t have gotten better. There was no way I was going to last long as a Shield. Yunho did the sensible thing, discharging me, considering my health and all that. _I know that_. I just wish—“

Mingi stopped. Tried to breathe through the pain when it flared, digging his fingers into the armrests, and counting to eight. It eased soon enough, the painkillers kicking in.

Wooyoung made a questioning sound.

“I just wish that he kept me anyway,” he finished in a whisper and didn’t look at Wooyoung. 

A broken Shield was useless in battle, but people could still keep it home, couldn’t they? As a memento, or a decoration? The Queen did.

But his prince had decided he wanted his palace free of broken things and sent him away. Or at least, Mingi assumed he had. He wasn’t so sure anymore.

The ex-guard sighed and ran his hands through his hair, before tugging on it. It was getting long enough to curl at the ends. He should cut it soon.

“Not going to assume anything, but this sounds like a man who wants to keep you. Safe and happy, at least,” Wooyoung offered from the side.

Mingi didn’t have anything to say to that.

“How much did the prince offer you?” he asked instead. 

“About a million. Dollars, not won.”

Mingi let go of his hair, turned to look at Wooyoung, and stared. Wooyoung politely stared back.

“What.”

“Yeah, what! I turned down a million for you! Do you know what I could have done with a million? I could have taken Sannie on a romantic trip around the world. Twice. If you don’t call me your favorite relative after this, I’m complaining to Aunt Yuri,” Wooyoung rambled, smiling up at Mingi.

The former Shield leaned back in his chair and ran his hands along the sides of the armrest. Paused.

“How did you think it was a good idea to talk to a former Shield about such a sensitive topic? It could have gone very badly for you,” Mingi wondered.

“Yeah, but I got you drinking first and took away your knife, didn’t I?” Wooyoung shot back.

Mingi laughed, sharp.

“You did. I’m asking how you managed it.”

Mingi had dismissed the comfort he felt around Wooyoung as him being his family. But there was more to it than that. Just then, Wooyoung had handled him with ease that spoke of practice, barely flinching at any of Mingi’s moods. Even now, he sat, with no care in the world.

“My boyfriend, the martial arts instructor? His full name is Choi San,” Wooyoung said in the end, as if that answered the question. For Mingi, it did.

He knew the man. San of House Choi. 

Black ops, shadow agent, Blade. The opposite of Jongho. Mingi remembered training with him before ultimately branching out to the security division. He’d missed San’s sparring sessions as much as he missed his kisses. The man had a talent for making Mingi forget himself and let loose, be it in violence, sex, or both. 

Mingi had heard that San had retired and didn’t know if that meant he was dead or dying. It was nice to hear that he was alive and well. Wooyoung should be good for him.

“You robbed the crown of a very sharp Blade,” Mingi told him.

Wooyoung shrugged, smiling. “Well, the crown doesn’t need sharp Blades anymore.”

Mingi considered that. The Queen had needed a Sword, the prince had needed a Shield, so that was what the Songs had been. Different generations, different expectations. The next one should be kinder.

“You’re right, it doesn’t,” he agreed in the end.

There was a moment of a companionable silence and then—

“Do you have the number Yunho used to contact you?”

Wooyoung did. The number was oddly familiar.

[Your highness, what are you doing with the Royal assets?]

[What any prince should do with it. Wasting it]

[To spy on former employees?]

[I don’t like what you’re implying here]

[Wooyoung told me.]

[He is a liar]

[Your highness, Wooyoung is family.]

[...okay, he is not a liar. He is a snitch to me and very loyal to you. Good on you]

[Also hello, Mingi?]

[Сайна байна уу, Эрхэм дээдсээ]

[Was that Russian??]

**Author's Note:**

> Each installment keeps getting longer. I think the next (and likely the last) one might be 10k.


End file.
